


Undine

by ms45



Category: Dragon Age
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-12 13:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms45/pseuds/ms45
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blood's not the only fuel for magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“I have received a message from Cumberland.”

Isabela made a noise somewhere between a tummy rumble and a dog’s fart. Meredith narrowed her eyes at her, but continued.

“A group of powerful mages has escaped their Circle. They seek to penetrate Kirkwall.” Another _hmmmpfff_ from Isabela. “The Knight-Commander at Cumberland informs me that these mages actively seek the destruction of not just our Circle, but the Chantry itself. They will violate our morality, ravish our brethren – “

Isabela actually wheezed at this statement, forcing Hawke to jump in and ask “What’s so special about _these_ mages?”

Meredith glared at all of them, her blue eyes almost twinkling with rage, then suddenly sighed, slumping by exactly 1/5th of an inch. “Knight-Commander McElvie was imprecise. He is a man who fears nothing, yet his letter hinted only at depravity even you could not imagine.” The emphasis on _you_ was extremely subtle. “I need you because you are implacable in your refutation of blood magic. My men are strong, experienced, faithful. But they do not have your… depth.” Meredith’s eyes pinned Hawke, expecting full endorsement of her statement. __

_Maker, if that bitch mentions Mother I’m going to tear off her head and shit down her throat._ Thankfully, Meredith was prevented from raising this still-painful issue by Isabela suddenly interjecting “They don’t have his _girth_ , either!” and being forcibly removed by Fenris and carried out of the Templar Hall. Hawke and Varric took Meredith’s directions on the most recent sightings of the (presumed) blood mages, and headed home to gear up.

~

Darktown. Of course. It had to be fucking Darktown.

Hawke wasn’t in the habit of asking Anders to help him bust mages. Anders’ loathing of blood magic seemed sincere, if self-interested – he was more concerned about the damage they did to the mage cause than, say, their habit of draining their victims’ will and leaving them a shrivelled husk. Still, the conflict of interest was something Hawke preferred to avoid, as much for Anders’ sake as his own.

He did want to get a better picture of his mark, though, and instead of bothering the healer, Hawke paid a visit to Mistress Selby. His relationship with the goodwife was fragile – it was her job to assume all mages to be innocent victims of fear and prejudice, his to assume they were all unstable gateways to the Void. But he had helped her with some errands – some were fun pranks on Templars to tweak Meredith’s nose, others involved innocent children whom even Hawke couldn’t see as a threat. Her knowledge of the mage world was immense, and she would surely have something useful to say.

The look of abject terror on her face was, indeed, extremely useful.

“Undine van Onselen? Here? In Kirkwall?” The normally unflappable Selby looked like she was casting about for a convenient dock to jump off.

“Who is she, Selby? Not a friend, I take it.”

“Not a friend to anyone,” hissed Selby. “There’s a piece missing with that one.”

“Like my good friend Gascard?” Hawke still got a bitter smile out of remembering how he’d snapped that whoreson’s neck. You had to cling to the bright moments.

“…more like…” Selby’s voice dropped, “more like the other fellow.”

Hawke felt like he’d been punched, but made himself go on. “Necromancy? As well as blood magic?”

“All that and more. I don’t know how much is just stories.”

“Have you actually met her?”

Selby shivered. “Only once, before she… got her reputation. I helped a bunch of kids get on a boat to Cumberland and she was on it. At the time I just thought she was a funny bird – weird pale eyes, looks straight through you, talks at you like you’re a post. She kept asking about their age, and where they were from, were the girls bleeding or the boys having ‘emissions’, were they still bedwetting…”

“That seems reasonable for a sea voyage,” said Hawke, remembering his own journey to Kirkwall with horror. “The last thing you need is terrified mage girls suddenly having a bellyful.”

“See, that was what I thought, so I sent them off with some coin and some food and wished them good luck.” Selby’s face darkened. “Then weeks later I heard nobody made it to Cumberland alive… except her. It’s common enough to lose a boat, and enough people die of scurvy or the plague or whatnot, but Undine wrote me this lovely little letter about how she was so terribly sorry, and how she was expecting more children soon. Which made me think, not on my fucking watch.”

“You can’t prove it was her, surely?”

“No… but people die around her, Hawke. I wish you could have seen her.”

“Would she consider you a friend? I mean, if you wrote to her – “

Selby’s eyes widened and she slashed frantically with her arms. “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. No. No letter. I do NOT need to be around her. If I hear anything, I’ll send a runner to the Hanged Man. But I do not need to meet Undine van Onselen ever again.”

Hawke sighed. It would have to do.

~

Selby was clearly worried about the prospect of an unannounced visit from Undine, because a runner turned up at the Man that very evening with a long and detailed message.

“A lady answerin’ to the description of six feet tall, pale long blonde hair, pale blue eyes and thin as a rail ‘as been seen in Darktown. She is wearin’ a shiny blue robe wif fur on the collar an’ cuffs. She ‘as a necklace made out of yooman teef. She bought several items from the Coterie Barker and was last seen disappearin’ in the direction of Smuggler’s Cut.”

“Was there anyone with her?”

“That information is not covered by my fee, messere.”

Hawke held up a silver. The runner fixed him with a gaze of withering contempt. Hawke added another. The runner stared as if Hawke had grown another head. Sighing, Hawke gave three silvers to the runner who promptly said “I was not informed of any persons accompanying the aforesaid lady, messere.”

“Why you little - !” But the runner, true to his profession, had bolted out the door before Hawke could give him a hiding. As Varric pointed out, negative information is still information, so they peeled Isabela away from the bar and strolled across town to collect Fenris for a lovely outing to the sewers. 


	2. Chapter 2

The sewers were unnervingly quiet. Hawke sprung a couple of simple traps, but normally on such a visit they could expect at least a couple of respectable dust-ups with the local thuggery. Today, the only individuals they encountered were the most pathetic of Darktown's most unfortunate, and both of them fled at the very sound of Hawke's approach. The usual banter between rogues dwindled out insipidly as the very walls seemed to suck the sound out of them.

“Remind me why we're not under the bar at the Hanged Man, Hawke?” said Isabela, her words jovial, her voice not so much.

“We just want information. If you see anyone wearing human teeth as a necklace, run.” Hawke had figured the necklace was typical embellishment, but the way his skin was crawling he was expecting to be jumped by a blood mage wearing an entire human skull around their neck any minute now.

The sewers meandered this way and that, presumably leading to private and public buildings above ground, but down here they made no sense. With low light, incomprehensible layout and any sound absorbed by layers upon layers of shit, it was easy to just go missing, intentionally or not.

Which is how Fenris found himself alone in a opening, his companions who knows where. He'd been walking sideways, trying to avoid anyone springing up behind them, and had gone behind what he thought was a pillar, fully expecting to rejoin his companions after a few metres. When this did not happen, he was not initially worried, and simply retraced his steps. Unfortunately, he quickly realised, there were several offshoots to this section that he hadn't noticed on the way in, thinking them simply recesses for maintenance workers, and only now seeing that they had their own depths.

His heart beat faster. _No! I will_ not _panic_. He had been lost before, he had faced far worse things than being stuck in a shit-stinking sewer (stop panicking), he would simply keep walking and catch up with those pissweak rogues (stop panicking), with their fucking silent steps and fucking void-taken stealth (stop! panicking!). Finally he stopped, his heart thudding and breath coming in short, yelping chunks, the panic compounded by the desire not to get a lungful of stench.

He drew his sword and activated his markings, hoping the flash would attract the right attention.

Behind him, he heard a long inhalation followed by a sigh. “Can it be? A flower amongst the excrement? Come here, that I may smell you.”

~

“Where's Fenris?”

Varric accepted that, as a surface dwarf, he had no stone sense to speak of. That didn't make it a lot pleasanter to be crawling around a labyrinth of crap in almost perfect darkness. Trap detection wasn't his thing – he was more of a sharpshooter, verbally and literally – and he'd already had an unpleasant encounter with a spring trap that mussed his hair. Both kinds. So he kind of assumed the elf was nearby. Probably.

“Isabela! Now is hardly the time!” said Hawke, hoping to hear the elf's resigned _Hn_ indicating his acceptance of the group's good-natured (if not especially funny) joshing. Maybe the warrior and the pirate had overcome the stench long enough for a quickie in an access tunnel – with any luck they'd hear some high-pitched yelping accompanied by gravelly moans and have enough ammunition for at least a month of friendly abuse.

“No, it isn't, which is why I'm worried.” Isabela being serious was not a sound Hawke wanted to hear. Good things never happened when Isabela was being serious.

“That's it. We're going back.” Hawke began a determined tromp back the way they came in. At least, he _thought_ that was the way they came in.

~

The speaker was extremely tall, with very long, very straight blonde hair, and skin so pale he could see blue veins in an eerie echo of his own tattoos. The irises of her eyes were nearly white, and she wore a robe of many different shades of blue, but the human teeth did seem to be a mere rumour. Fenris edged backwards warily, hunched and ready to strike. “Back off, mage,” he growled.

Undine did not bother to answer him. Before he could react, she did – something, he didn't have time or attention to pay – and he was paralysed, his warrior's stance foolish before the power she commanded. “I have heard of this,” she murmured, putting her fingers out to touch the lyrium on his neck. “I wonder that you live at all.” She placed a hand on his jaw and tilted his head, which moved naturally as if under volition, yet Fenris was powerless to resist. For all that his markings had made him a fearsome monster, able to bend people to his will simply by showing them their possibilities, they now rendered him a lifeless hunk of meat. He was panicking again, but there was no evidence of it as the mage controlled him absolutely, down to his very heartbeat.

“My children, observe,” said Undine, and shadows moved in the darkness to reveal figures in familiar robes. “As always, the Tevinters are at the very edge of magical innovation. Although these markings appear purely aesthetic, they are designed to map both the body and the sigils of the realm of demons. By linking the dominion channels of the greater venal system with the system of ...”

Her words were gibberish, but her actions were unequivocal as she tore off Fenris' armour to expose the lyrium patterns, with no more regard for her subject than a fishwife has for a haddock. As Undine's 'children' closed in, Fenris was back in Danarius' chambers, on display for the edification of the College of Magisters, helpless to resist. Fingers pointed, trailed and tickled, the pleasure even worse than the pain, and he unable to shrink or hide from their attentions.

Pain radiated from his core as his bladder suddenly filled to bursting. 

 

 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mage nerds will know that Tevinter is not represented in the College of Magi, but it seems reasonable that they would have a similar peak body of their own.


	3. Chapter 3

They almost didn't find him, the group having stumbled into what seemed like a hundred little crannies and dead ends in their efforts to simply retrace their own steps. It was only Isabela's decision to investigate what was probably just a leak in the sewer – but hey, can't get any more lost than we already are, right? - that led to finding the elf, huddled in a near-invisible heap and whimpering in Arcanum.

Isabela spotted him first, or rather, she spotted what she thought was a heap of rags which she hoped might contain some saleable items. When she went to pick through them, she had about half a second to think _that looks like white hair_ when Fenris lashed out at her, barely missing her eyes as she whipped her head back just in time.

“I've got him!” she yelled, her words absorbed by the walls. Hawke and Varric made a run for her general direction, but by the time they reached her she was waving them away, bent over the elf and making soothing noises. They hung back, wondering what was so awful that they shouldn't help.

“Fenris. It's me. Isabela. You know me, with the ship and the poison and the chest puppies,” she cooed gently. He shrank away from her, curling his body inwards as if to protect his nudity, except that he wasn't naked. Isabela could barely see him in the darkness, and after several hours in the sewers, she couldn't smell anything. “Are you hurt? Do I need to make you a splint?”

“Get away from me,” he finally hissed.

“Fenris, you need to get home. If nothing else, we all need a long hot bath. Hey! What was that for?” This last at being punched solidly in the chest. Just because they were large didn't mean it didn't _hurt_.

“I said, _get away_.”

“What happened to your armour? Why are you – oh, Maker,” she said, suddenly realising that much of his clothing had been torn from him. “What did – fucking shit. We need to get you to a healer. No, not that one (ducking another swipe). But you need to have someone look at you.”

“It's not what you think,” Fenris mumbled. “Just leave me alone.”

Hawke and Varric edged closer, encouraged by Fenris' apparent return to normal. “I said get away! Are you feeble?!”

“I dunno about feeble, but I'm lost and hungry and I need a bath. You really think you can make your own way out, Broody?”

Silence, then whispering. Isabela got up and marched back to the other rogues. “You blokes get back to the Hanged Man. We'll report in when we're good and ready. _Go_.” She pushed Hawke away to make her point.

* * *

It was late afternoon when Hawke and Varric made it back to the Hanged Man, and nearly midnight before Isabela showed up alone. At Varric's raised eyebrow she said “He's at the mansion. He's relying on my discretion to explain what happened in the sewers.” Varric raised the other eyebrow. “That was my reaction, but he... I took him to the Rose and used their bath. I think he's reasonably safe.” Hawke's eyebrows copied Varric's.

Isabela had to think very, very hard about how to tell the story without breaking her promise to Fenris not to humiliate him further, which slowed her down a lot. Hawke and Varric's interjections didn't help either. Put as discreetly as possible, Undine and her 'children' were not restricting themselves to the control of blood. They certainly had access to the usual array of paralysis and mind-control techniques and were highly accomplished at using them. But, in short, “piss mages is a concept I could have lived without.”

Hawke thought with horror of the proud and fastidious elf at the mercy of... “If I start laughing, that makes me an evil person, right?”

“Better do it here while he can't see you, Hawke,” but Varric wasn't laughing and neither was Isabela.

“He wouldn't even let me give him a tit wash,” she said, her face a picture of despondency, and then Hawke laughed, great shrieking yelps that had him lying on the floor with tears on his face. Even his fellow rogues' contemptuous stares couldn't stop him. Finally, Varric said “You done?” and Hawke crawled back into his seat and took a few deep breaths.

“Yes. Urine mages. Can't wait to meet them.”

* * *

“Merrill, have you ever heard of mages using … other parts of their body? Besides blood?”

Merrill looked at Hawke, her eyes so large it looked like her head might disappear. “Am I... missing something dirty again?”

“What?! Er, well, um...” Hawke had a theory that Merrill would go like the clappers in bed, but her childlike appearance, and Isabela's threats to his favourite bits of anatomy should he hurt the little mage in any way, tended to dampen his enthusiasm. “Have you ever heard of mages using, er, urine for their powers?”

“ _Urine_? You mean _wee_?”

“...yes.”

Merrill got up and started flipping through her books, if it could be called flipping when each book was at least 12 inches tall and about three thick. “What kind of demon would want to work with your _wee_?” she mused, pulling a book out, looking at the cover and shoving it back. Finally she pulled down a monolith that was almost as big as she was (“don't be silly, Hawke, I do this all the time,” to his offer to carry it for her) and dropped it on the table with an immense _thud_. Tilting the massive cover open using her entire body, she began to recite “Abezethibou … Allastor... Angra Mainyu... Asha'bellanar... ” as she carefully turned the pages. It was all gibberish to Hawke, who sat politely with his hands clutched between his knees because he was itching to do something, but many years of visiting Merrill had established that hurrying her would slow everything down to a crawl while Hawke tried to stop her crying.

Finally, Merrill stopped. “There is a reference... only one, right here.” She pointed, and Hawke had to remind her that his reading was shaky on a good day and nonexistent for Ancient Dalish or whatever the hell this was. Glaring at him, she read “The spirit of Humility at first seems benign, actively repudiating any efforts to offer help or service. Over time, it becomes apparent that the spirit of Humility is close kin to the spirit of Pride, as the spirit's expectations surprise and weary the summoner.”

“How's that help?”

“It doesn't! It sounds like utter nonsense. I only chose it because it says here, the spirit's elements are water and acid, and its humours are bile and urine. It doesn't seem to be a very important spirit.”

“Does it have anything helpful on how to resist it?”

“It just says 'vigilance'. That's not helpful.”

“I think I might... cross-reference.”

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  



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